The CMS Integration Grid Testbed

TL;DR

This paper describes the development and operation of the CMS Integration Grid Testbed, a functioning distributed computing grid used for large-scale Monte Carlo event generation and data analysis in high-energy physics.

Contribution

It presents the design, implementation, and successful continuous operation of one of the world's first functional grid computing testbeds for scientific research.

Findings

Generated over 1 million CMS Monte Carlo events in two months

Demonstrated continuous, reliable grid operation for large-scale scientific computing

Integrated multiple tools and middleware for effective grid management

Abstract

The CMS Integration Grid Testbed (IGT) comprises USCMS Tier-1 and Tier-2 hardware at the following sites: the California Institute of Technology, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Florida at Gainesville. The IGT runs jobs using the Globus Toolkit with a DAGMan and Condor-G front end. The virtual organization (VO) is managed using VO management scripts from the European Data Grid (EDG). Gridwide monitoring is accomplished using local tools such as Ganglia interfaced into the Globus Metadata Directory Service (MDS) and the agent based Mona Lisa. Domain specific software is packaged and installed using the Distrib ution After Release (DAR) tool of CMS, while middleware under the auspices of the Virtual Data Toolkit (VDT) is distributed using Pacman. During a continuo us two month span in Fall of 2002, over 1 million official CMS GEANT based Monte Carlo events were generated and returned to CERN for analysis while being demonstrated at SC2002. In this paper, we describe the process that led to one of the world's first continuously available, functioning grids.